physical force

You’ll Never Walk Alone

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The civic spirit of Bedfordshire’s Captain Tom Moore has been celebrated in murals across the UK, including this one by Blaze FX in Clonduff. Moore attempted to raise funds for the NHS during covid by doing laps around his garden with his walker in advance of his hundredth birthday. He originally aimed at raising 1,000 pounds but ended up raising 30 million after the effort went viral.

On the left is a tree cross-section (or “tree disk”) (on the left) that has been decorated with a hooded gunman and the insignia of the (east Belfast) UVF and YCV, along with a printed board with “The uniform may have changed but the cause remains the same. Ulster Volunteer Force” around the UVF emblem and “Fallen, not forgotten” below. There is a very close variant of this wording on a mural in Bowtown (Newtownards).

Tullyard Way, Castlereagh

Update, 2024: the mural has been – mostly – blacked out

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Our British Identity

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“[Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous.] In war you can only be killed once. In politics, many times. [ – Winston Churchill, 1903] Our British identity is non-negotiable! UVF East Belfast Battalion.” Hooded UVF volunteers are shown in active poses (as compared to the cradled rifles in The Erosion Of Our Identity) ready to resist any compromise in the still-unresolved tension between Brexit and the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement of 1998.

The second board, on a similar theme, is in Belvoir Street, in east Belfast: “The prevention of the erosion of our identity is now our priority”.

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Unbowed, Unbroken

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This is a mural by Damian Walker in the New Lodge, in support of republican prisoners in Maghaberry, showing a single shirtless prisoner with a flower or dripping blood (?) surrounded by three baton-wielding officers. Sponsored the 32-County Sovereignty Movement (web).

Replaces: Damn Your Concessions, England

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Comrades In Resistance

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A Che Guevara quote – “I don’t care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting” – unifies two panels bearing masked men firing funeral volleys, Irish and Palestinian shields, and “Our day will come” in both Irish and Arabic.

New Lodge, north Belfast

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Ballymurphy Massacre

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The inquest into the Ballymurphy Massacre – the killings of 11 people from August 9th to 11th, continues, with testimony this past week from former Paratrooper Henry Gow (Irish News | BBC-NI). The image above shows Hugh Mullan being shot from Springmartin while going to the aid of a neigbour, Bobby Clarke; he is waving a white Babygro (BallymurphyMassacre.com). The Paratrooper is distinguished by his red beret.

The mural was originally painted by Rısteard Ó Murchú in 2008 and displayed first on the Whiterock Road then around the corner on the Springfield Road; the location of the repainted board is at the Glenalina Road entrance to the area, in the spot of the former 1916 GPO mural (which had lasted seventeen years before the wall was re-plastered and whitewashed in 2017).

The plaque on the fence reads, “This plaque is dedicated to the 11 innocent civilians murdered by members of the British Parachute regiment in August 1971. Fr Hugh Mullan, Frank Quinn, Noel Phillips, Joan Connolly,

Danny Teggart, Joseph Murphy, Eddie Doherty, John Laverty, Joseph Corr, Paddy McCarthy, John McKerr. Donated by the Frank McCann Cumann, Hamilton [Scotland] (Fb).”

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Tomás Ághas

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Thomas Ashe was working as an Irish teacher in Dublin when he joined the Irish Volunteers and in 1916 served as a battalion commander in the Easter Rising, for which he was sentenced to penal servitude for life. He went on hunger strike in May 1917 and again in September when he was rearrested by the British authorities for a “seditious” speech. He died on September 25th, one hundred years ago, becoming “an chéad staılceoır ocraıs a maraíodh san 20ú haoıs” (“first hunger striker to die in the 20th century”).

In the five circles around his portrait are Countess Markievicz, Pádraig Pearse, and James Connolly – fellow fighters in the Rising – and (in the bottom left) Máırtín Ó Cadhaın (author of Cré na Cılle and IRA member interned during WWII), and the symbol of Laochra Loch Lao and more generally of An Ceathrú Gaeltachta/Gaeltacht Quarter (see previously The Big Plan and Onwards). In the middle is a march from An Dream Dearg in support of Acht Na Gaeılge (an Irish language Act) past the Bobby Sands mural on Sevastopol Street.

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